San Martin

Ingredients

Instructions:

Stir the gin, vermouth, and Chartreuse* well with cracked ice, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with twist of lemon peel.

* Robert of the Embassy Club calls for the 80-proof yellow kind, while Craddock of the Savoy calls for the 110-proof green. Robert's right. The yellow is more mellow, and the drink is less frightful and more delightful. (Besides, between the vermouth and the gin, you've got enough botanicals to go around.)

The Wondrich Take:

"San Martin" or "Sand Martin"? One drink (a simple mixture of gin, red vermouth, and Chartreuse), two names: saint or bird. When stirring up this slightly odd but tasty throat-tickler, we've always leaned toward the latter -- whether because that's what Harry Craddock called it in his 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, which is as close as mixology comes to holy writ, or because we're dedicated birdwatchers and can't count the number of times a glimpse this spry little bank dweller has brought cheer to an otherwise drab and humdrum day. (And if you can't tell which one of those reasons is utter bullshit, we've got a timeshare in Tarpon Springs you might like to hear about. Clue: We tend to prefer our birds legs-up on the table.) Still, we must admit we have always kinda wondered how the common name for Riparia riparia got attached to this particular tipple. The Sand Martin's one of your drab, inoffensive, common sort of birds, unlikely to inspire mixological creativity, and its coloring bears no resemblance whatsoever to the cocktail.

So when, the other day, we were leafing through Charles H. Baker's classic 1951 drink-travelogue, The South American Gentleman's Companion, and found him in Guayaquil, Ecuador, "walking down the Malecón -- from the nice new yacht club to Club Unión for a sundown San Martín cocktail," that got us out of our chair and down to the library we keep here at the Institute. Now, you would think something called "the Esquire Institute for Advanced Research in Mixology" would have every cocktail book known to mankind. Alas, such is not the case. The endowment's taken a helluva hit over the last couple of years (we thought "Esquire's Random Drink Generator" sounded like a good idea at the time...), and you know how collectibles have been performing on eBay of late. Nonetheless, we did turn up a little thing called Cocktails -- How to Mix Them, by "Robert of the Embassy Club." It's from 1922, and not only does it have a San Martin, but it identifies it as a "well-known South American drink." Suddenly, all is clear. It's a liberation thing. José de San Martín was the guy who kicked the Spanish out of Argentina, Chile, and Peru. There's something named after him in just about every town on the continent. D'oh.